03Dec04 (Monthenor): This is the long overdue comic for X-Men Legends, which we heart.

X-Men Legends: Our obsession with this game sandwiched my New Jersey trip. I can't imagine how hard it was for Morgion to put this game down for five days while I went and had fun, but it is infinitely more fun with two players. This game is a Diablo-esque romp through the Marvel universe, leading a team of up to four X-Men. The trick is, with two people you each only have to worry about controlling two team members. You can throw things at each other, strategically hoard health packs, or even ignore the CPU characters entirely and steamroll whole levels.

This game starts out with a couple solo levels with Wolverine and Cyclops, and then explodes open with about six or seven X-Men to choose from. This is the most difficult part of the game, when teammates die frequently just because their hit points are so low. You run out of "focus" to power your...powers, and you can't carry more than 10 health packs for emergencies. Around about level 15, the game shifts in the other direction. Your characters are now starting to unlock their second-tier abilities, you usually have plenty of HP, and there are more characters to choose from. By level 35 you're owning entire military bases without much effort and dealing thousands of bonus combo damage to supplement your attacks' hundreds.

We both definitely had favorite characters. Morgion liked Storm. She could fly, shoot lightning with nigh-infinite range, destroy walls, boost our combo damage, and rarely ran out of energy. I ended up playing Nightcrawler almost exclusively. He has this move where you press one button and he teleports off to kick up to eight people. Combined with his defense ability that made him translucent and nearly impossible to hit, I could fire off a Teleport Flurry and relax. Nightcrawler did all the work of finding targets for me.

If you have a friend or three to share it with, this game rocks harder than any party game I've played since Mario Tennis.

Now if you'll excuse me, Rumble Roses came in today. It has the potential to be the greatest game ever made, an assertion which will require extensive testing.